A Thanksgiving postcard. Photo courtesy Kenneth C. Brady Digital Archive
By Daniel Dunaief
Daniel Dunaief
Sending a text message to friends and family half way around the world and then getting an instant response is pretty incredible, shortening the distance between any two people.
And yet, as Thanksgiving approaches, I appreciate some of the earlier, albeit slower at times, elements of my younger years.
Take, for example, the postcard. Sure, people still send them, but postcards and letters are not as necessary or, in many cases, even considered. Even if people don’t send us texts, we can follow them on any of the social media sites where they’re showing us how they’re having the time of their lives and eating incredible food.
Over three decades ago, when my father died, I remember the exquisite and bittersweet pain from seeing the handwritten notes he’d left for himself. He didn’t have a smart phone where he could make electronic lists. Reading his pointed and slanted script was so deeply personal that I felt as if the letters and words connected us.
Once, years before he died, my father flew for a business trip. Eager to write to me and without any paper, he took out the barf bag from the seat in front of him, wrote about his travels and shared some dad humor, put it in an envelope and mailed it. I remember smiling broadly at the words he shared and the unconventional papyrus he’d chosen to carry those words.
The modern world of digital pictures and digital cameras gives me the opportunity to relive numerous experiences. I can easily sort those images by year and location, without needing to buy an album, find the right sequence of photos and slip them behind the translucent cover.
Still, remember when we used to bring rolls of film to the drug store for them to develop? We’d come back two or three days later, open up the often small green envelope and pour through the photos, wondering what we caught, what we missed and how the image compared with our memory.
The hit-or-miss nature of those photos made the imperfections somewhere between disappointing and perfect. They were real moments, when hair got in our eyes, when we shared our disappointment about a birthday present, or when we spilled a container of apple juice as we were blowing out candles.
What about all those photos from people in the early part of the 20th century? Didn’t they look utterly miserable? Was it the shorter life span, the challenging early days of the camera, bad dentistry and orthodonture or, perhaps, a culture that hadn’t yet suggested saying “cheese” or smiling for the camera?
My theory on those miserable faces, though, is that the pictures took so long to prepare amid challenging weather conditions — it was too hot to wear that overcoat — that people wanted the process to end so they could stop trying to hold a squirming child or ignore the need to scratch an itch.
Maybe I grew up in the sweet spot, where pictures weren’t instant but were easy enough to take that they didn’t require endless retakes. Yes, I have friends and relatives who insisted on taking 37 shots of the same moment, just in case someone was closing their eyes, which triggered the kind of fake smile in me that I recognize in my children when they’re eager to be somewhere else, doing something else, and, most likely, looking down at their phones to see pictures of other people.
This Thanksgiving, I appreciate not only the gifts of the present, with the endless storage space on my phone and the ability to capture life in real time, but also the perspective from a past, where the anticipation of seeing a snapped photograph or receiving a postcard turned the pictures into keepsakes and memory gifts.
From left, Joshua Rest and Jackie Collier. The blurred image in the background shows the genome structure of Aurantiochytrium limacinum, including the arrays of rDNAs at the chromosome ends, and the two mirusvirus elements that were discovered. Photo by Donna DiGiovanni
By Daniel Dunaief
They were trying for two years to solve a puzzle that didn’t make sense. Then, a combination of another discovery, some extensive analysis, and a deep dive into the past helped them put the pieces together.
Jackie Collier, Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University and Joshua Rest, also an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook, had been looking closely at the genetic sequence of a marine protist called Aurantiochytrium limacinum. A circular section and pieces at the end of the chromosome seemed inconsistent with the rest of the genes and with the specific type of single-celled organism.
But then, they saw a preprint of a paper in 2022 that the prestigious journal Nature published earlier this year that described a new type of virus, called a mirusvirus, which appeared to have genetic similarities and a signature that matched what they saw in their protist.
Mirus means “strange” or unknown in Latin, which was a way to describe the unusual evolutionary traits of these viruses.
Collier and Rest, working with a group of collaborators, found that a high copy circular structure and genetic elements that integrated at the end of one chromosome resembled this mirusvirus.
“From the perspective of the virus folks, ‘mirus’ was apt because the mirusviruses contain features of the two very distinct ‘realms’ of viral diversity,” Collier explained. “Our results confirm that strangeness, and add more strangeness in terms of two different ways to maintain themselves (circular episomes or integrated into a chromosome) in the same host genome.”
Researchers had discovered the mirusvirus by sequencing DNA they took from the ocean. “What our findings do is connect to a host and hopefully eventually prove that there is a protist that contains a mirusvirus genome,” said Collier.
The Aurantiiochytrium protist, which is part of the Thraustochytrids order, intrigues researchers in part because it produces essential omega-3 fatty acids and carotenoids, which enhances its biotechnology potential. This protist also intrigues Collier because it is involved in decomposing dead mangrove leaves in mangrove forests.
Dormant virus
The Stony Brook scientists have been working on analyzing the genome for a paper they recently published in the journal Current Biology since 2019.
“We had been struggling to figure out what that was,” said Collier. “We had a lot of hints that it had some relationship to some kind of viruses, but it wasn’t similar enough to any known virus. We were struggling to figure out what to call this thing,” which they had tentatively designated CE1, for circular element one.
Identifying viral elements provided the “hook” for the paper.
Rest suggested that the different confounding elements in the protist genome came from two different viruses.
At this point, Collier and Rest think the virus may be something like the herpesvirus, which hides out in human nerve cells. That virus enters a latent phase, remaining quiescent until a host becomes stressed.
John Archibald, Lucie Gallot-Lavallee and others from Dalhousie University in Canada, who are collaborators on this study, are creating the kind of conditions, such as lower food or colder temperatures, that might reactivate the viral DNA, causing it to release viral particles.
The research team has detected similar mirusvirus proteins in other Aurantiochytrium isolates and in four other Thraustochytrid genomes.
Focusing on this protist
Collier started working on thraustochytrids in 2002, after the first outbreak of QPX disease in Raritan Bay hard clams.
Bassem Allam, who is now the Marinetics Endowed professor in Marine Sciences at SBU asked Collier if she would help understand what was going on with the clams which had QPX disease. That was caused by another Thraustochytrid.
The organism that caused QPX is a relative of the protist that interested Collier.She chose Aurantiochytrium in part because it was the easiest to grow.
When the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation started a program to develop molecular genetic methods for diverse marine protists about seven years ago, Collier approached Rest for a potential collaboration.
A key piece, half a century old
In her informatics work, Collier followed a path that Google or artificial intelligence might otherwise have missed.
Like traveling back hand over hand in time through older research, Collier pulled up the references from one study after another. Finally, she found an intriguing study from 1972 that had overlaps with their work.
Scientists had isolated a Thraustochytrid from an estuary in Virginia using the same kinds of methods Collier and Rest used to grow Aurantiochytrium. Using electron microscopy, these earlier researchers characterized its ultrastructure. Along the way, these 1970’s scientists noticed that starved cells released viral particles, which Collier and Rest believe might be the first record of a mirusvirus.
The researchers wrote a short paper that the prestigious journal Science published.
A cat connection
While Collier, who lives in Lake Grove, and Rest, who is a resident of Port Jefferson, are collaborators at Stony Brook, they have also have a feline connection.
In the beginning of the pandemic, a feral cat delivered kittens in Rest’s garage. Rest’s family initially tried to raise them, but allergies made such a pet arrangement untenable.
A cat lover, Collier was searching for kittens. She adopted two of the kittens, bottle feeding them starting at three days old. When Collier and Rest speak by zoom, Rest’s children Julia, nine, and Jonah, five, visit with the cats virtually.
As for their work, Collier and Rest are intrigued by the possibility of gathering additional pieces to answer questions about this virus.
“For me, the most intriguing question is how common our observations will turn out to be — do many Thraustochytrids have latent mirusviruses?” she explained.
We’ve come a long way from the “my dog ate my homework” days.
I mean, come on, let’s give our society the credit it’s due. We have taken the blame game, the finger pointing and the it-couldn’t-be-me-because-butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth game to an entirely new stratosphere.
Gone are the days of simple, linear and mostly nonsensical excuses.
Let’s start in Washington, DC, which is the biggest clown show this side of the Atlantic and where the notion of a democracy gets battle tested nearly every day
Who is responsible for the national debt? That, of course, depends on whom you ask. The democrats point to former President Trump, while the republicans accuse President Biden and the Democrats.
Maybe those wily politicians are onto something. You see, if no one takes responsibility for anything and we can point fingers at the other side reflexively and without any effort to compromise and work together, we can live without consequence, create our own economics and come up with judgmental and schoolyard bully nicknames for the other side.
Brilliant! Blame someone else convincingly enough and not only do you not have to look in the mirror or come up with solutions, but you can also turn your entire reason for being into defeating the other side or, at the very least, enjoying their losses.
Look, I’m a Yankees fan. I know all about Schadenfreude. The next best thing to a Yankees victory, and it’s a close second, is a Red Sox loss.
But I digress. People have turned blaming others into a fine art. In sports, athletes and coaches deploy the modern blame game to excuse their losses or to step back from accepting responsibility or, perish the thought, to give the other team credit.
Like a zebra in the Serengeti to a hungry lion, referees in their striped uniforms in football games become convenient targets. They took away a victory by calling a game against us. Athletes and coaches can dig their verbal claws and teeth into those officials, who stole what would certainly have been a more favorable outcome.
How about school? It couldn’t possibly be the fault of our angelic children, who were busy watching these athletes on TV or on their phones the night before, for doing poorly on a test. It has to be the teacher’s fault. If teachers could only inspire their classes, our children would learn and excel.
You know who I like to blame? I like to focus on tall people. Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends are tall. It’s just that, well, have you noticed that tall people get a lot of attention? Some of them are CEOs of big companies and make enormous salaries. They are also picked first in gym, which gives them the confidence to become successful.
While we’re affixing blame, let’s also shake our heads at gym class. Sure, it’s healthy to run around and have a few moments when we’re not listening to teachers who may or may not inspire us, but gym class can bruise egos and create a Darwinian world where height, which is kind of the fault of our parents and their parents and on and on, is an advantage.
Hey, I’m not whining. Okay, well, maybe I am, but it’s not me and it’s certainly not my fault. I blame society, commentators on TV, coaches, politicians, teachers, my parents, your parents, the parents of the kid who served as a bad role model for my kids, and maybe Adam, Eve and the snake for putting us in this position.
Oh, and you can be sure butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. I have a dairy allergy, which, ironically, is the fault of my dairy farmer grandfather.
Christopher Vakoc with graduate student Junwei Shi. Photo by Gina Motisi/ CSHL.
By Daniel Dunaief
It is the type of miraculous conversion that doesn’t involve religion, and yet it may one day lead to the answer to passionate prayers from a group of people on a mission to help sick children.
Researchers in the lab of Professor Christopher Vakoc at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have been working tirelessly to understand the fundamental biology of Rhabdomyosarcoma, or RMS, which is a type of connective tissue cancer that afflicts between 400 and 500 people each year in the United States, with more than half receiving the diagnosis before they turn 10 years old.
As a part of her PhD research, Martyna Sroka searched for a way to convert the processes involved in this cancer into something benign.
Using a gene editing tool enhanced by another former member of Vakoc’s lab, Sroka disrupted a signal she had spent years trying to find in a protein called NF-Y, causing cancerous cells in a dish to differentiate into normal muscle cells, a conversion that offers future promise for treatment.
Sroka, who is now working as a scientist in a biotechnology company focused on the development of oncology drugs, described how RMS cells look small and round in a microscope. After disrupting this protein, the “differentiated cells become elongated and spindle-like, forming those long tubular structures,” she explained.
She often grew cells on plastic dishes and the differentiated RMS cells spanned the entire diameter of a 15 centimeter plate, providing a striking visual change that highlighted that conversion.
While this research represents an important step and has created considerable excitement in the scientific community and among families whose philanthropic and fundraising efforts made such a discovery possible, this finding is a long way from creating a new treatment.
Other research has indicated that disrupting NF-Y could harm normal cells. A potential therapeutic alteration in NF-Y could be transient and would likely include follow ups such as a surgical, radiation or biological approach to remove the converted RMS cells, Vakoc explained.
Nonetheless, the research, which was published in August in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers a potential roadmap for future discoveries.
“It was a long journey and being able to put the pieces of the puzzle together into a satisfying mechanism, which might have broader implications not only for our basic understanding of the biology of the disease but also for potential novel therapeutic approaches, was extremely exciting and rewarding,” said Sroka.
“It’s great to see so much excitement in the pediatric cancer field, and I am hoping that with time it will translate to much-needed novel therapeutic options for pediatric patients.”
The search
Cancer signals typically involve rewiring a cell’s genetic material, turning it into a factory that creates numerous, unchecked copies of itself.
Sroka and Vakoc were searching for the kind of signal that might force those cells down what they hope is a one-way differentiation path, turning those otherwise dangerous cells into more normal muscle cells that contract.
To find this NF-Y gene and the protein it creates, Sroka, who started working in Vakoc’s lab in the summer of 2017, screened over a 1,000 genes, which Vakoc described as a “heroic effort.”
Encouraged by this discovery and as eager to find new clinical solutions as the families who helped support his research, Vakoc recognizes he needs to strike a balance between trumpeting this development and managing expectations.
Interactions with the public, including families who have or are confronting this health threat, “comes with a lot of responsibility to make sure we’re being as clear as possible about what we’ve done and what have yet to do,” said Vakoc. “It’s going to be a long and uncertain road” to come up with new approaches to this cancer.
Funding families
Some of the families who provided the necessary funding for this work shared their appreciation for the commitment that Vakoc, Sroka and others have made.
“We are very excited about the newest paper [Vakoc and Sroka] published,” said Phil Renna, the Senior Director of Communications at CSHL and Director of the Christina Renna Foundation, which he and his wife Rene formed when their daughter Christina, who passed away at the age of 16, battled the disease. The Christina Renna Foundation has contributed $478,300 to Vakoc’s lab since 2007.
“In just a few short years, he has made a major leap forward. This lights the path of hope for us and our cause,” said Renna.
Renna explained that the lab has had numerous inquiries about this research. He and others recognize that the search for a cure or treatment involves “tough, grinding work” and that considerable basic research is necessary before the research can lead to clinical trials or new therapeutics.
Paul Paternoster, whose wife Michelle succumbed to the disease and who has raised funds, called Vakoc and Sroka “brilliant and incredibly hard working,” and suggested the exciting results “came as no surprise.”
He is “extremely pleased” with the discovery from the “standpoint of what it can lead to, and how quickly it was discovered.”
Paternoster, President of Selectrode Industries Inc., which manufactures welding products and has two factories in Pittsburgh, suggested that this strategy can have implications for other soft tissue sarcomas as well.
The next steps
To build on the discoveries Sroka made in his lab, Vakoc plans to continue to use a technique Junwei Shi, another former member of his lab, developed after he left CSHL and joined the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now a tenured professor.
Shi, whom Vakoc called a “legend” at CSHL for honing the gene editing technique called CRISPR for just this kind of study, is also a co author in this paper.
In future research, Vakoc’s lab plans to take the screens Sroka used to find NF-Y to search to the entire human genome.
“That’s how the family tree of science operates,” said Vakoc. Shi “made a big discovery of CRISPR and has since continued to create new technology and that he is now sharing back” with his lab and applying it to RMS. Additionally, Vakoc plans to expand the testing of this cellular conversion from plastic dishes to animal models
Shi, who worked in Vakoc’s lab from 2009 to 2016 while he earned his PhD at Stony Brook University, expressed satisfaction that his work is paying dividends for Vakoc and others.
“It just feels great that [Vakoc] is still using a tool that I developed,” said Shi in an interview. Many scientists in the field are using it, he added.
For Shi, who was born and raised in southern China, working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory fulfilled a lifelong dream.
He recalled how he retrieved data one Saturday morning that indicated an interesting pattern that might reveal the power of a new methodology to improve CRISPR screening.
When Vakoc came to the lab that morning, Shi shared the data, which was a “whole turning point,” Shi said.
Shi said he appreciates how CSHL has been “a home for me,” where he learned modern molecular biology and genetics.
When he encounters a problem in his lab, he often thinks about how Vakoc would approach it. Similarly, Vakoc suggested he also reflects on how his mentor Gerd Blobel, who is a co-author on the recent paper and is at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, would respond to challenges.
As for the family members of those eager to support Vakoc, these kinds of scientific advances offer hope.
When he started this journey, Renna suggested he would feel satisfied if researchers developed a cure in his lifetime. This paper is the “next step in a marathon, but it makes us very excited,” he said.
To share the encouraging results from Vakoc’s lab with his daughter, Renna tacked up the PNAS paper to the wall in Christina’s bedroom.
We are on the precipice of a few social evenings. As such, I have prepared the internal and external dialog of one such potential interaction. Yes, some of it reflects my performance in previous gatherings, while other elements are exaggerated versions of what may happen. And away we go:
“Hi Pat, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Dan.”
“Good to meet you, too, Dan.”
Ow, did you have to squeeze my hand that hard? Were you trying to prove something? I get it. You’re bigger and stronger than I am. You probably lift weights and stare at yourself in the mirror at the gym while you listen to Annie’s “Tomorrow.” No, I know you don’t listen to Annie. At least, not in public..
Not that you asked, but I like to sweat in the gym, too. I use the elliptical machine, the bike and the treadmill.
“So, did Maria tell you about me?”
Wait, who’s Maria? Oh, right, your wife, the woman standing next to you. She’s the reason we’re here. Our wives worked together a few years ago and now the four of us are going out to dinner.
Pat is talking about how great he is at bowling.
He wants me to smile, so I’m smiling, but I’m not sure what he said. Maybe it was self deprecating? Nope, doesn’t seem likely. He’s talking about how much his average has gone up since he joined the Thursday night league.
“Good for you,” I say.
He nods appreciatively. Whew! I said the right thing. Go me!
Oh, cool, now he’s talking about how great his son is at tennis. I’m picturing myself scuba diving. I’m looking at him, but I’m imaging fish around me, the warm water, and the bubbles that expand as they head to the surface. Nice! Life is good down here. Oh, wait, he just touched my shoulder. He wants me to say something. Staring into space isn’t enough.
“You know what I’m saying?” he asked.
I’m sorry, no. I don’t know, but I’m going to nod and hope that’s enough. Nope, clearly not.
“Tell me more about your son,” I say.
That’s enough. He’s off to the races with another story about some incredible app his son is working on that already has over 1,000 subscribers. My wife seems to be enjoying Maria’s company. Wait, no, she wrinkled her eyes subtly at me. Uh oh! She knows I’m not paying attention to John. No, that’s not his name. It begins with a P. No, hold on. I’ll get it. It’s Paul.
“So, Dan,” she says, “did Pat tell you about their plans to go to Alaska this summer?”
Pat! Duh. How easy was that? I would have gotten it eventually. No, I wouldn’t. Who am I kidding?
I’m going to focus closely on his story. He’s talking about how much he enjoys vacations. I like vacations.
“Alaska was pretty amazing,” I say, hoping I shared the right sentiment. “We saw whales, drove a dog sled, and ate fresh fish.”
He’s always wanted to go to Alaska. He can’t wait to see the wide open terrain. He wonders whether it’ll be the same 500 years from now.
Assuming the Earth is still here and is habitable, what will humans be talking about and thinking about in 500 years? Will a potentially longer life span mean that future humans will be more patient? Will they think about what our life was like today? They’re as likely to think about us as we are to think about the people who shared the world of 1523.
The evening is almost over. We pay the check and talk about how wonderful it is to to go out together.
“Yes, we should do this again some time,” I say as we head towards the car. Maria and my wife give each other a professional hug – not too long and not too close – while Pat and I share a manly handshake. Pat seems to appreciate the firmer grip.
“Something wrong with your hand?” my wife asks as we walk towards the car.
“Nope, all good,” I say, as I try to bring the circulation back to my fingers.
A Jamaican fruit bat, one of two bat species Scheben studied as a part of his comparative genomic work. Photo by Brock & Sherri Fenton
By Daniel Dunaief
Popular in late October as Halloween props and the answer to trivia questions about the only flying mammals, bats may also provide clues about something far more significant.
Despite their long lives and a lifestyle that includes living in close social groups, bats tend to be resistant to viruses and cancer, which is a disease that can and does affect other mammals with a longer life span.
Armin Scheben
In recent work published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, scientists including postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and first author Armin Scheben, CSHL Professor and Chair of the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology Adam Siepel, and CSHL Professor W. Richard McCombie explored the genetics of the Jamaican fruit bat and the Mesoamerican mustached bat.
By comparing the complete genomes for these bats and 13 others to other mammals, including mice, dogs, horses, pigs and humans, these scientists discovered key differences in several genes.
The lower copy number of interferon alpha and higher number of interferon omega, which are inflammatory protein-coding genes, may explain a bat’s resistance to viruses. As for cancer, they discovered that bat genomes have six DNA repair and 33 tumor suppressor genes that show signs of genetic changes.
These differences offer potential future targets for research and, down the road, therapeutic work.
“In the case of bats, we were really interested in the immune system and cancer resistance traits,” said Scheben. “We lined up those genomes with other mammals that didn’t have these traits” to compare them.
Scheben described the work as a “jumping off point for experimental validation that can test whether what we think is true: that having more omega than alpha will develop a more potent anti-viral response.”
Follow up studies
This study provides valuable potential targets that could help explain a bat’s immunological superpowers that will require further studies.
“This work gives us strong hints as to which genes are involved, but fully understanding the molecular biology will require more work” explained Siepel.
In Siepel’s lab, where Scheben has been conducting his postdoctoral research since 2019, he is using human cell lines to see whether adding genetic bat elements makes them more effective in fighting off viral infections and cancer. He plans to do more of this work with mice, testing whether these bat variants help convey the same advantages in live mice.
Armin Scheben won the German Academic International Network Science Slam competition with his presentation on bat genomics.
Siepel and Scheben have discussed improving the comparative analysis by collecting information across bats and other mammals of tissue-specific gene expression and epigenetic marks which would help reveal changes not only in the content of DNA, but also in how genes are being turned on and off in different cell types and tissues. That could allow them to focus more directly on key genes to test in mice or other systems.
Scheben has been collaborating with CSHL Professor Alea Mills, whose lab has “excellent capabilities for doing genome editing in mice,” Scheben said.
Scheben’s PhD thesis advisor at the University of Western Australia, Dave Edwards described his former lab member’s work as “exciting.”
Edwards, who is Director of the UWA Centre for Applied Bioinformatics in the School of Biological Sciences, suggested that Scheben stood out for his “ability to strike up successful collaborations” as well as his willingness to mentor other trainees.
Other possible explanations
While these genetic differences could reveal a molecular biological mechanism that explains the bat’s enviable ability to stave off infections and cancer, researchers have proposed other ways the bat might have developed these virus and cancer fighting assets.
When a bat flies, it raises its body temperature. Viruses likely prefer a normal body temperature to operate optimally.
Bats are “getting fevers without getting infections,” Scheben said.
Additionally, flight increases the creation of reactive oxygen species, which the bat needs to control on an ongoing basis.
At the same time, bats produce fewer inflammatory cytokines, which helps prevent them from having a runaway immune reaction. Some researchers have hypothesized that bats clear reactive oxygen species more effectively than humans.
A ‘eureka’ moment
The process of puzzling together all the pieces of DNA into individual chromosomes took considerable time and effort.
A Mesoamerican mustached bat, one of two bat species Scheben studied as a part of his comparative genomic work. Photo by Brock & Sherri Fenton
Scheben spent over 280,000 CPU hours chewing through thousands of genes in dozens of species on the CSHL supercomputer called Elzar, named for the chef from the cartoon “Futurama.” Such an effort would have taken eight years on a modern day personal computer.
During this effort, Scheben saw this “stark effect,” he said. “We had known that bats had lost some interferon alpha. What astounded me was that some bats had lost all alpha” while they had also raised interferon omega. That was the moment when he realized he found something novel and bat specific.
Scheben recognized that this finding could be one of many that lead to a better understanding of the processes that lead to cancer.
“We know that it’s unlikely that a single set of genes or a small set of genes such as we identified can fully explain the diversity of outcomes when it comes to a complex disease like cancer,” said Scheben.
A long journey
A resident of Northport, Scheben grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. He moved to London for several years, which explains his use of words like “chuffed” to describe the excitement he felt when he received a postdoctoral research offer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
When he was young, Scheben was interested in science despite the fact that classes were challenging for him.
“I was pretty poor in math and biology, but I liked doing it,” he said.
Outside of work, Scheben enjoys baking dense, whole wheat German-style bread, which he consumes with cheese or with apple, pear and nuts, and also hiking.
As for his work, which includes collaborating with CSHL Professor Rob Martienssen to study the genomes of plants like maize that make them resilient amid challenging environmental conditions, Scheben suggested it was the “best time to be alive and be a biologist” because of the combination of new data and the computational ability to study and analyze it.
Scheben recognized that graduate students in the future may scoff at this study, as they might be able to compare a wider range of mammalian genomes in a shorter amount of time.
Such a study could include mammals like naked mole rats, whales and elephants, which also have low cancer incidence and long lifespans.
My wife and I used to say “the recording is always on.”
It was our code words to each other to be careful about what we said and did in front of our children, particularly when, as many parents know, we might not want our children to act or speak in the same way we might be tempted to in the moment.
Our children have an incredible ability to monitor everything we do, even when they don’t appear to be paying any attention to us. Sometimes, they actively choose the opposite because our choices annoyed or frustrated them.
If, as many of us say and believe, we want our children to be better than we are, we wish them well, wait and watch, hoping their happiness, success and achievements far exceed our own.
Perhaps such reaction formation is what brings grandparents and grandchildren together, causing various characteristics to skip a generation, as two opposites create the same.
Aside from things like weekly routines, an emphasis (or not) on achievements like community service, or performance in sports or music, parents recognize that we are role models.
In the movie “42” about trailblazer Jackie Robinson, the first African-American man to play in Major League Baseball, a father shouts racial epithets at Robinson, leading his conflicted son to ponder how to behave. The son echoes what his father shouts.
In that moment, Peewee Reese puts his arm around Robinson, offering his public support and quieting the hostile crowd. Reese even suggests, as a nod to the realities of today, that “Maybe tomorrow we’ll all wear number 42. That way they won’t tell us apart.”
Films are great, but we don’t live in a world where supportive music and smiling heroes remind us who we are or how we should act.
It’s up to us to decide how to be better for ourselves and for our children.
A friend recently shared a story about his daughter. A college student, she was working at an ice cream store during a fall break. A few customers came in and a man in the group asked her where she attended college.
When she told him, the man suggested that there were Muslims who attended that college and it would be easy enough to take a few of them behind the shed and get rid of them.
The man who made a joke about murder at a time of violent conflict in the Middle East and ongoing and hostile disagreements among Americans probably wasn’t thinking about his children, about my friend’s daughter, or anyone else.
Maybe he was repeating the words his father or mother said at the dinner table, after an evening of drinking or within minutes of leaving a house of worship.
Is that the person he wants to be? Is that what he would encourage his own children to believe, that people who practice other religions or have other beliefs are somehow such enemies that it’s okay to make such a comment?
We have to be better than that. Maybe the guy didn’t mean it, but even saying it suggests that he not only thought it, but that he also likely shared that idea in some context in front of his children.
Killing and hatred won’t end if we don’t hold ourselves accountable for our actions and words.
We identify ourselves in particular ways, by such factors as nationality, religion, race, among many other labels.
Those identifiers, many of which we didn’t choose but are an accident of our birth, mean that others around us are on the outside, associating with a different group.
We owe it to our children to imagine and create a better world. That starts by serving as role models and not as reflexive perpetuators of anger, hatred, or prejudice towards those we consider others.
With the world echoing the conditions from the 20th century, we should speak and act in ways that bring people together and that would make us proud if and when we heard our children making those same, or perhaps better, remarks.
The free event will be held on Oct. 30 at 4 p.m.at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts, Theater Two, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook.
By Daniel Dunaief
Want to hear characters from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein discussing artificial intelligence? Or, perhaps, get an inside look at an interaction between a scientist studying penguins and a potential donor? Maybe you’d like something more abstract, like a thought piece on aspects of memory?
You can get all three at an upcoming Science on Stage performance of three one-act plays written by award-winning playwrights that feature the themes of cutting edge research from Stony Brook University.
Ken Weitzman Photo courtesy of SBU
On October 30th at 4 p.m. at Staller Center for the Arts’ Theater Two, which holds up to 130 people, professional actors will read three 10-minute scripts. Directed by Jackson Gay, topics will include research about artificial intelligence, climate change in Antarctica and collective memory. Audience members can then listen to a discussion hosted by Program Founder and Associate Professor of Theater Ken Weitzman that includes the scientists and the playwrights. The event is free and open to the public.
Funded by a grant from the Office of the Provost at Stony Brook University and supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, the performances are an “amuse-bouche,” or an appetizer, about some of the diverse and compelling science that occurs at Stony Brook University, said Weitzman.
“The hope is that [the plays] generate interest and get people to want to ask the next question or that [the plays] stick with audience members emotionally or intellectually and makes them want to discover more.”
The upcoming performance features the writing of two-time Tony Award winning playwright Greg Kotis, who wrote Urinetown; Michele Lowe, whose first play made it to Broadway and around the world; and Rogelio Martinez, whose plays have been produced around the U.S. and internationally.
The short plays will feature the scientific work of Nilanjan Chakraborty, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Heather Lynch, Professor of Ecology and Evolution, and Suparna Rajaram, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science in the Psychology Department.
“It’s a good example of what we are doing and the opportunities for us as we continue to put funding in the arts and the humanities and also in the intersection of that from an interdisciplinary perspective,” said Carl Lejuez, Stony Brook Provost, in an interview. This kind of collaborative effort works best “when it’s truly bi-directional. Both sides benefit.”
Lejuez credits President Maurie McInnis with setting the tone about the importance of learning the humanities and the sciences. Lejuez said McInnis talks during her convocation speech about how she had intended to become a physician when she attended college, but took an art history course that was part of a general education curriculum that changed her life. The sixth president of Stony Brook, McInnis earned her PhD in the History of Art from Yale University.
Lejuez highlighted a number of interdisciplinary efforts at Stony Brook University. Stephanie Dinkins, Professor in the Department of Art, bridges visual art and Artificial Intelligence. She has focused her work on addressing the shortcomings of AI in understanding and depicting black women.
The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics has an arts and culture program, while the Collaborative for the Earth has faculty from numerous disciplines. They are starting a new Tiger Teams to develop key areas of study and will offer seed funding for interdisciplinary work to tackle climate change.
Lejuez plans to attend Science on Stage on October 30th.
“I feel an almost desperation to learn as much as I can about all the aspects of the university,” he said. Not only is he there to “show respect for the work and give it gravitas, but it’s the only way [he and others] can do [their job] of representing and supporting faculty and staff” in science and the humanities.
An enjoyable experience
The participants in Science on Stage appreciate the opportunity to collaborate outside their typical working world.
Heather Lynch, who conducts research on penguins in Antarctica and worked with Lowe, described the experience as “immensely enjoyable” and suggested that the “arts can help scientists step out of their own comfort zone to think about where their own work fits into society at large.”
Lynch explained that while the specific conversation in the play is fictionalized, the story reflects “my aggregate angst about our Antarctic field work and, in that sense, is probably more literally true than any conversation or interaction with any real life traveling guest.”
Lynch believes the play on her work is thought provoking. “Science is a tool, what matters is what you do” with that science, she said.
Lynch was thrilled to work with someone new and believes Lowe probably learned about Antarctica and the challenges it faces.
Bringing talent together
The first iteration of Science on Stage occurred in 2020 and was available remotely in the midst of the pandemic. Weitzman had reached out to scientists at Stony Brook to see who might be willing to partner up with playwrights.
Heis eager to share the diverse combination of topics in a live setting from this year’s trio of scientists. “I did some nudging to make sure there were a variety” of grand challenge topics, he said.
Weitzman explained that bringing the humanities and arts together in such an effort generated considerable enthusiasm. “There’s such incredible research being done here,” he said. “I want to engage for this community.”
He hopes such a performance can intrigue people at Stony Brook or in the broader community about science, theater writing or science communication.
While the plays are each 10 minutes long and include actors reading scripts, Weitzman said the experience would feel like it’s being performed and not read, particularly because professional actors are participating.
He also hopes one or more of the playwrights sees this interaction as an opportunity to create a longer piece.
“I would love it if [this experience] encourages a playwright to think it justifies a full length” script, Weitzman said.
Lynch wrote a pilot screenplay herself called “Forecast Horizon” that she describes as an intellectual exercise. If Netflix calls, however, she’s “definitely interested in having it live on,” she said. Writing the screenplay gave her a “better appreciation for how much more similar science is to the arts than I would have thought. Both involve solving puzzles.”
As for future funding, Lejuez suggested that the University was still figuring out how to allocate available funds for next year and in future years.
He would like to see how this first time in person goes. Depending on the interest and enthusiasm, he could envision a regular source of funds to support such future similar collaborations.
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Some of the ways SBU combines arts and humanities with science
By Daniel Dunaief
The southern flagship State University of New York facility, Stony Brook University seeks ways to bring the best from the arts and humanities together with science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Provost Carl Lejuez. Photo from SBU
Indeed, the school provides a home for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, where researchers tap into famed actor Alda’s improvisational acting skills, among other techniques, to connect with their audiences and share their cutting-edge work and discoveries.
In addition to the October 30th Science on Stage production at Staller Theater 2, Provost CarlLejuez recently highlighted numerous additional interdisciplinary efforts.
This past spring, the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics presented artwork by Professor of Mathematics Moira Chas. Chas created artwork that combines yarn and wire, clot and zippers to illustrate mathematical objects, questions or theorems.
The Office of the Provost has also provided several grants to support interdisciplinary work. This includes two $25,000 grants that promote the development of new research teams to explore interdisciplinary areas of scholarly work and address challenges such as Digital Futures/ Ethical Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability, Critical health Studies/ Health Disparities, Global Migration, and other areas.
Additionally, the Collaborative for the Earth brings together faculty from the arts, humanities and social sciences with behavioral science and STEM faculty. The university is starting a new Tiger Teams that will develop key areas of study and offer seed funding to tackle climate change. The funding will explore ways to create solutions that policy makers and the public can adopt, as well as ways to address disparities in the impact of climate change and ways to support people who are disproportionately affected by this threat.
SBU added interdisciplinary faculty. Susannah Glickman, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, has interests such as computing, political economy, 20th century US and world history and the history of science.
Matthew Salzano, IDEA Fellow in Ethical AI, Information Systems and Data Science and Literacy, meanwhile, has a joint appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Communication. He studies rhetoric and digital culture, emphasizing how digital technology, including artificial intelligence, impacts and interacts with social justice.
Through course work, members of the university community can also address interdisciplinary questions. Associate Professor in the Department of Art Karen Lloyd teaches an Art and Medicine course, while Adjunct Lecturer Patricia Maudies, also in the Art Department, teaches Art + The Brain. Both of these courses bring in guest lecturers from STEM and medicine.
Stony Brook also hosts centers aimed at interdisciplinary research, such as the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS).
One of the current goals and objectives of the IACS strategic plan is to advance the intellectual foundations of computation and data, with high-impact applications in engineering, in the physical, environmental, life, health and social sciences, and in the arts and humanities.
President Barack Obama said he wanted even more funding for treatment. File photo
By Daniel Dunaief
Daniel Dunaief
Years before he was the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama gave me a call.
I was working at Bloomberg News as a banking reporter and was covering some financial services issue. A source of mine suggested that I chat with this state senator from Illinois, whom he insisted was going places. My source clearly recognized Obama’s potential.
What I recall about a conversation that was akin to getting a rookie card for Derek Jeter was that Obama was erudite, eloquent and halting in his response to my questions. Attuned to the rapid pace of New York conversation, I was unaccustomed to the cadence of his conversation.
When Obama ran for office, I recognized not only his name but also his speech pattern.
I have had brushes with a wide range of people of varying levels of fame, often times in the context of my work as a journalist. Please find below a brief compendium of such interactions.
— Jim Lovell. The commander of Apollo 13, Lovell and his wife Marilyn attended an event in Florida where I was their point of contact. When the cool night breeze gave Marilyn a chill, Lovell jumped up to get her sweater and asked when they could leave. I asked my bosses, who wanted Lovell, who was the honored guest, to stay until after dinner. He was greatly appreciative when I told him he could finally lift off.
— Yogi Berra. I attended an event at Tavern on the Green event, where Berra was a client of the host. Even though I was only five foot, seven inches tall at the time (I’m probably a bit shorter now), I towered over the older and thin former Yankees catcher. When I told him it was an honor to meet him, he took my hand in his and offered a polite smile.
— Eliot Spitzer. Before he was a governor and client 9, Spitzer was a hard-charging New York Attorney General who went after investment banks for inflating stocks to help their business at the potential expense of investors. I spoke regularly with Spitzer, whose energy and intellect made it hard for my fingers to keep up while I was typing notes. I expected the impressive and ambitious Spitzer to ascend to national office.
— Scott Kelly. I interviewed Astronaut Scott Kelly after he set an American record for continuous time in space of 340 days aboard the International Space Station. With his then girlfriend, now wife, Amika Kauderer, in the room, the two of them described his book. She also recounted the second class treatment she received from some of the wives who weren’t impressed with her status as a girlfriend.
— Ed Koch. The former New York mayor was a staple at Bloomberg News, where I worked for several years. At 6 feet, two inches tall, Koch towered over me as he regularly filled his plate with some of the free snacks and sugary treats at the newsroom.
— Hank Paulson. I interviewed the former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs at an International Monetary Fund meeting in Hong Kong. After I asked the first question, Paulson, who would become Treasury Secretary, yanked the microphone out of my hands and spent the rest of the interview holding it up to his mouth. I tried to project my voice into the microphone and above the chatter in a crowded restaurant.
— Goldie Hawn. At a lunch at Shun Lee Palace near Lincoln Center with a former banker from the now defunct Lehman Brothers, I spotted the famous actress as I approached her crowded table. Dressed in a sleeveless black dress, she could tell I recognized her. Rather than look away, she gave me a warm and welcoming smile. I wished, even moments later, that I had given her a thumbs up or an appreciative grin.
— Earl “The Pearl” Monroe. When I was at the New York Daily News, I spoke regularly with the Knicks legend for a rookie (Channing Frye) vs. veteran stock picking contest. While he lost the contest, he couldn’t have been friendlier and more receptive during our weekly calls, updating me on his life and sharing his weekly stock picks.
Growing up in Hooper, a small town in the central part of Nebraska, Jon Heusel considered following in his parents’ footsteps.
His father William took him on house calls where he provided for a wide range of medical needs.
Jon Heusel with his father William.
Along the way, however, Heusel, whose mother Mona was also an intensive care unit nurse towards the end of her career, discovered genetics and immunology as he earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska and then his MD, PhD at the University of Washington in St. Louis.
Enamored with these sciences and inspired to pursue a path of patient care from a different perspective, Heusel blazed his own trail, albeit one in which health care remained a professional focus.
Indeed, the second-generation doctor, who became Vice Chair for Clinical Pathology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University on October 2nd, has devoted his career to the translation of new technologies into healthcare solutions.
For the past decade, this involved next generation sequencing, but also other new technologies and computerized systems for analyzing the data.
Heusel is inspired by a drive to improve the healthcare at academic medical centers like Stony Brook and Washington University, where new discoveries can affect positive change.
“The more I learned about Stony Brook, which is an up-and-coming university, the more I thought it was a magnificent opportunity for me,” said Heusel, who admired the recent jump Stony Brook University has made in the U.S. News and World Report rankings.
Mandate
Pathology Chair Kenneth Shroyer described Heusel as a “wonderful recruitment” and believes his background makes him especially well suited to his role.
“We want to develop in-house capacity to do advanced molecular testing to find actionable mutations that could inform therapeutic decision making,” said Shroyer. “He’s extremely experienced in that area.”
John Heusel’s medical school graduation with his parents William and Mona Heusel.
Shroyer suggested Stony Brook wants to develop opportunities for advanced sequencing technology within the molecular pathology lab, with a focus on molecular oncology.
Heusel described the development of a comprehensive diagnostic service in cancer as a high priority.
The cost of building new services with new technologies will require significant investment. The Pathology Department will work in partnership with the Cancer Center to build services.
“Ideally, the clinical services we build will also be attractive in supporting research and contract testing from companies in the pharmaceutical and biotech spaces,” Heusel explained.
By using informatics and digital pathology, Stony Brook can become a place where medical students and professionals in related areas including computational biology, genetic counseling and oncology increasingly want to come.
Heusel particularly appreciates the opportunity to translate technology and science into healthcare solutions.
“If you do this correctly, the tests, systems, programs and people you have recruited to run them will extend far into the future,” he said. “When this happens, you leave behind a legacy of excellence.”
Heusel will replace Eric Spitzer, who will retain his role of medical director of labs until Heusel takes over that role in January.
Shroyer described Spitzer’s contributions to the department and hospital as “tremendous,” adding that he has “been outstanding in his position as leader of the hospital laboratory. While we know [Heusel] is going to be extremely successful in part due to [Spitzer’s] help in the transition phase, we’re still going to miss” Spitzer.
Spitzer has been a valuable counselor to Shroyer and a mentor to many and is an “outstanding educator” who has been a “very impactful educator for our residents and medical students,” Shroyer said.
Educational opportunities
Heusel not only has ambitions for the university, but also for himself in his new job.
The new pathology vice chair is looking for opportunities to put his knowledge and instincts to work to make Stony Brook better — even if only in the slightest of ways, he said.
“The tumblers of fate must align themselves to become opportunities for transformational leadership; those are relatively rare,” he explained. “It’s my hope that I am well prepared and can recognize them when they cross my path.”
As for the public, Heusel recognizes that primary school teachers have a tough job in educating the public in general and in sharing the intricacies of science such as genetics. He admires them for their work.
He suggested that primary education could be reimagined amid the exponential growth in knowledge.
“I am hopeful that biology and genetics will be taught in a way that empowers people to understand their bodies and their health or disease better, but I think it is more important to teach our children to think critically,” he explained.
Part of Heusel’s job is to make the results of complex testing accessible to patients and, in many cases, their doctors.
“The growing importance of genetics in our understanding of health and disease means people will, over time, gain new insights simply because they are reading and hearing about these concepts much more often,” he explained. “It also highlights the critical role that well trained genetic counselors have in the healthcare of today and the foreseeable future.”
Jon Heusel with his wife Jean at a Gallery North art show.
Heusel and his wife Jean enjoy living in the Stony Brook area, where they have found the people welcoming. In the past, they have gone scuba diving and sky diving and have also done canoeing, hiking, kayaking and skiing.
As they have gotten older, they have tended towards quieter experiences. They have found the West Meadow Beach sunsets “amazing” and have enjoyed their introduction to shows at the Staller Center for the Arts.
Heusel also appreciates a life outside work that includes working with wood, painting, doing pottery, cooking and making up poems, songs on the ukulele and bad puns.
His parents generated a sense of compassion in Heusel and his sisters, with a “wonder of the human body, and with the ability to find humor in almost anything.”
As for his work, Heusel is thrilled that Shroyer recruited him to join the university. He admits, though, that he has had to adjust to local driving styles.
“I am surprised by the aggressive manner in which people drive inside their cars which is so very opposite from the friendliness they exude outside of them,” he said.
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